Snow Day
by Haus
Summary: Yuiko chooses the wrong person to love.


A/n: A little caveat (since I know most Loveless fans have only seen the anime) that Yuiko's mature characterization here is from the manga, especially the more recent chapters.

* * *

She's siting in her bed and gazing out longingly at the snow outside her window. Thick, cotton fluffs of white drifting down with a winter silence. It makes her feel still, it makes her feel empty. The bed barely creaks behind her.

Warm, splayed palms slide up the sides of her back and rest possessively on her shoulders. He doesn't hold her, merely perches his chin atop the crown of her head, absently combing through the pink of her hair with long, thin fingers. She loves him, and her heart stutters with a brief warmth before it patters out again from exhaustion. Sore and behind her ribs is a numbing, static pale. Frost bitten feeling.

She wanted some fresh air.

She's seen only one face in weeks.

But, his hand is slowly becoming a vice in her hair as he draws himself back- pulling her away from the window and closer to him. Something in her breaks, and in that moment she would have given anything for a hug, for a word of encouragement, for a kiss on her despair-heated forehead. He's right there, close enough for her to flinch with the sudden need to bury her face in the black, ice-smelling hair curtained over the sharp of his shoulder. To just shaky inhale and shaky exhale the scent of him and cry and forget for a moment and have the sensation of being loved not be so elusive for once in her short-lived life.

His hand keeps her at bay, and his detachment has never been so apparent as it is now. It settles in the thin space between them like hurt, every fractioned second that ticked by was like being gutted. And she couldn't bring herself to look up into the eyes that she could sense were scanning her and picking her apart.

His hand starts guiding her head downwards, a parody of gentle, and her back arches with the pleads of _not this_ catching in her throat, sliding back to sting every notch of her spine until the ache settles into the taut line of her thigh bones.

"You want to go outside." He reads her so well now- her voice has withered down to nothing from disuse. And **his** voice in comparison is so caring and knowing and reasonable and Nisei is always, always reasonable. His voice is the insistent hand on her that always calms her, always stamps her out and pushes her down.

Suffocation and tears and semen jammed down her throat for the simple bliss of walking through trees and building a snowman. Reasonable.

Her chest shakes with the effort of keeping her frail sobs clutched quiet beneath ribcage. Her lips quiver and utter a soft 'please', hardly more than a wisp of air because her throat is still sore from last night and the night before and the night before that and every night since Nisei greeted her one morning a week ago with a misleading smile and a tender hand cupping the side of her face and an _"I finally understand what love is now, Yuiko." _She sniffles, and she can't see his pupils dilate in response.

And his grip is suddenly yanking her up again, her immediate spark of hope smothered by his lips on her lips, and his mouth is working against hers, fingers affectionate and encouragingly curled under her chin and her mind goes on autopilot- goes back to when he spent days teaching her how he wanted her to kiss and how to tilt her head just so and how wide to part her lips and how to express herself through silence and body language alone to make him give her a true, precious smile._ So eager,_ he soothes, and she nuzzles up into his arms in the proper response.

And even though it hurts and hurts and hurts, she can't remember the last time she felt alone, and the young girl recalls that there are no locks on the doors. She can leave whenever she wants- all she has to do is let go of him, all she has to do is tell him no.

But she can't; this is all her fault. She knows that deep inside nothing of what she feels for him is hate, and she starts crying into his kiss because everyone she's ever loved has wounded her so much.

And this man, pulling her into the illusion of safety and warmth in his lap, this cruel man, leaning in to press his lips to her chattering incisors, promises her. To be-

The last.


End file.
